Operations Management Analysis

You have been retained to analyze how many check-in agents should be used at a check-in counter for a large hotel. During normal business hours, customers arrive at a rate of about 24 per hour, and it takes about 7 minutes to complete the check-in process. Both the poisson distribution for arrivals and the exponential distribution for service time apply and a FIFO discipline is used. The check-in counter will accommodate as many as five agents.

Determine the following, utilizing the queuing table D.5:
a. The average utilization rate (p).
b. The average queue length based on 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 agents.
c. The average waiting time based on 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5 agents.
d. What is your recommendation?